By Karen Hall

Editor

A Chapel Hill man who is still suffering from the effects of his service in Vietnam plans to be on the square in Lewisburg Monday for the Veterans Day ceremony.

Willie Haislip, 62, was drafted in March 1970, and spent 36 years in the military, counting his service in the Tennessee National Guard.

While he was in Vietnam, Haislip was involved in one of the deadliest hostile ground actions of the war. On May 21, 1971, 30 of his comrades died at Firebase Charlie 2, in Quang Tri province, when a bunker suffered a direct hit by a North Vietnamese 122 mm rocket.

"I was just there at the site," Haislip recalled yesterday. "I couldn't get into that bunker, so I ran to the next bunker."

After the attack, he said, "All of us was pulling bodies out. A lot of them was dead, but some were still alive."

According to an article in the "VFW" magazine for May 2011, by Richard K. Kolb, in early summer 1971, U.S. forces were turning over responsibility for the De Militarized Zone to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam.

Firebase Charlie 2, four miles south of the DMZ, had been under frequent rocket attack, but the enemy's aim was often inaccurate, Kolb wrote. In the late afternoon of May 21, six rockets had already landed, and the GIs had taken cover, when the seventh rocket made a direct hit on the club bunker, where 65 to 70 men were sheltering. The bunker was covered by four layers of sandbags and three feet of dirt, but this was no match for a direct hit from a 122 mm rocket.

"There was a flash and a ringing noise and it knocked me down," a survivor told Kolb for his article. "People were pinned by beams and dirt. Guys were screaming and scrambling to get out. It happened so fast -- then other guys came over to pull people out."

Haislip was one of those guys, finding the remains of men who had been his buddies.

He came home with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and later developed heart trouble and prostate cancer, as a result of exposure to Agent Orange.

Nevertheless, Haislip married, raised a family, and worked at ICP for 26 years, and at Goodman in Fayetteville for three years.

"That's where I had my last spell with my heart," he said, and he hasn't been able to work since.

Haislip gets Veterans Adminstration benefits because of his exposure to Agent Orange, a herbicide which, according to Wikipedia, was contaminated with an extremely toxic dioxin compound.

Haislip's story was brought to our attention by his daughter, Nicky Randolph, president of the Marshall County Education Association, who teaches math at Lewisburg Middle School.

World War I officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, however, fighting ended seven months earlier when an armistice or cease fire between allied nations and Germany went into effect in the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Nov. 11, 1918, is generally referred to as the end of the "war to end all wars." In November 1919, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Nov. 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day, now known as Veterans Day.

Events in Lewisburg will include the American Legion's ceremony on the square at 11 a.m. Monday, followed by lunch at VFW Post 5109. At 6:30 p.m. there will be a dinner at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church's Family Life Center, featuring a speech by 92-year-old World War II veteran Edwin Scott.